Echo’s goal is to ensure a stable and growing population of the Yellow-shouldered Amazon Parrot. We hope to achieve this by:
- Reducing the poaching of chicks for the local and international pet trade.
- Restoring the dry-forest habitat that the parrots call home.
- Reducing habitat degradation by non-native species such as donkeys, goats, and pigs.
Our Achievements and Impact:
- We have rehabilitated and released back into the wild over 75 Yellow-shouldered Amazon parrots who were either kept as illegal pets or injured as well as over 100 Brown-throated Parakeets. Many of these birds came into our care in 2011 when police seized over 100 birds from a poacher.
- We have established over thirty-three hectares (81.5 acres) as “exclusion areas” that keep invasive donkeys, goats, and pigs out of protected land where we have planted over 15,000 native trees.
- In 2014, we built a new native plant nursery to grow seedlings of the trees that once thrived on Bonaire. This nursery was doubled in size in 2016 to allow for the growth of up to 10,000 trees.
- Annually, we monitor vulnerable parrot nests to prevent poaching, where possible.
- Most years, we provide trees to STINAPA (Bonaire’s national park puthority) to plant in Washington Slaagbai National Park and on the island of Klein Bonaire, to support reforestation of those areas.
- We are removing feral pigs, which are an invasive species and damage native habitat.
- In 2014, we began a program to manage Africanized (“killer”) bees that compete for parrot nest sites. Some of these nest are halfway up cliffs that are 20 meters (60 feet) high.
- In past years, we have provided nest boxes for wild parrots.